One of the funny things about keeping the Cabinet is that I find myself discerning microtrends in the search words that bring people here. Recently, the hot search seems to be for various forms of clip art. Today alone, I've had people look for "pizza pie clip art," "clip art man woman," "africa tree village clip art," "tractor clip art," and "warrior clip art." Yesterday, "injured bear clip art," "burger clip art," and "cigar clip art." And still more the day before that.

Obviously I know that by using the phrase "clip art" again and again, I'm increasingly the likelihood that someone will turn up here trying in vain to find pieces of it. But at least for the next twenty-four hours, they'll know right away what their prospects are.

Today, so much warmth--so much that I opened the window in the bathroom and didn't even need to close it before I took my morning shower. It's far warmer outside the house than in it, for a little while. I awoke to find daffodils blooming in the backyard and promptly cut most of them and took them to the officehouse.

Today, so many little tasks--taxes, chief among them. I marvel once again this year at the instructions on the back of the 1099-MISC, the ones that tell you what to do if you are "in the trade business of catching fish." I marvel once again at the intricacies of some of the schedules and forms one has to fill out in order to be sure that one doesn't have to file more forms and schedules. And in and amongst these marvels, I marvel at yet another lesson in the practice of unbelievably awkward conversation, talk so shallowed and scraped dry that it leaves me literally incredulous. I have no language for losing an interlocutor, nothing to say in the face of having nothing to say. It's a realization doubly strange on a day so gorgeous that it had us all starting to bare arms and/or legs, or at the very least to say, look, this warmth: the summer decided to arrive already.